Storymania - Until Tuesday by Alif Muhammad

Until Tuesday (2)
Alif Muhammad

The manic running in the streets.

Smoke.

Another Tower falling.

Sheer panic.

The ash. The horrible torrent of ash.

The screaming. So much screaming.

The soiled survivors carried away.

The rubble. The remains.

Terror.

Tuesday afternoon.

The anchorpersons told me that the Pentagon was also partly damaged with numerous casualties, and a plane could have hit the heart of Washington D.C., if not for the hundreds of people who somehow martyred themselves and crashed the plane in Pennsylvania.

I watched nothing less than utter confusion and frustration.

"Mom?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Remember last night when I said I felt like nothing I did was gonna matter the next day?"

My mother looked at me strangely. "Well, you were absolutely right."

I walked to the kitchen and poured a glass of juice. I stared over the sink into nothing and thought about the ironies of my life.

Why was that apartment vacant just when I needed it? And why did it take two years of college for me to understand my life and change my major? And now that I think of it, why did I get such a great job right when all these changes happened to me?

Funny how questions sometimes answer themselves. "It was so weird," my mother began. "I got home on the #147 bus, and in the middle of the day you saw all these people in suits marching in a line down the street, with briefcases and stuff. They were all going home." Apparently, every weird thing that happened to me this summer led me to live near my mother. So that we could help each other. And not a moment too soon, either. As for my brother, there was no question that I’d visit him as soon as everything calmed down. I wonder when things will calm down.

My mother and I watched TV all afternoon. They showed one of the smaller Trade Center Towers struggling to hold itself up. It collapsed before our eyes. "There it goes," I said. Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and Tom Brokaw were each determined to be the primary source of 24-hr news for America. I didn’t object. I used my mother’s computer to talk to some buddies who may have friends or family in the military or in New York or Pennsylvania or Washington. Everyone was fine. I missed my buddies so much.

I was relieved to hear on the phone that I wouldn’t be working the next day, but then I found out that I still had to go to my Meteorology class. What could that guy possibly teach tomorrow?

It was almost evening, and the President was about to make a speech. Bush, who for months was the object of shameless ridicule, faced a camera and left his politics at the door. He spoke without trying to make a speech. He told everyone what happened and then told us what could be done. He didn’t lie, and he didn’t sugarcoat. He just took a few minutes out and addressed the country.

I went back to my apartment.

Tuesday night.

I put my books on the floor and leaned them against the couch, as if I would pick them up later. I was so sleepy.

I felt like a grade-schooler who went on a weird field trip and didn’t have class that day, except I was an adult and I didn’t have homework due tomorrow. I knew that everyone was confused and frustrated along with me, as if there was going to be an analysis due in the boss’ office first thing in the morning, except there wasn’t. As if we had a business flight to catch tomorrow afternoon, except we didn’t. As if we were going to be ahead of everyone in line at recess tomorrow so we’d get to the swings first, except we weren’t. So many expectations and so little reality makes for a confusing, frustrating evening.

Until Tuesday, everything was everything. Stem cells were good and bad. Gary Condit was important and unimportant. Getting oil from Alaska was an asset and a detriment. Until Tuesday, Americans ranked humanity based on how similar others were to their individual selves, finding fault in whatever made people different from them. Until Tuesday, life was a game in which everyone wins and everyone loses. A game where we all play with each other and against each other. A passionate game of dispassion where the object is to get as much as you can and risk it all for no conceivable reason.

But that morning, everything became nothing. The game was postponed. Indefinitely. In a sad way, I was happy for that: sad that it came to this, but happy that maybe something sensible can come from this. I looked at my textbooks. I had to laugh. How topical and up-to-date these were yesterday; how trivial and out-of-date they feel now. I couldn’t imagine doing any homework that night anyway. My religion class with the kindly professor, however, had only one textbook. I took it out and read a little. So Abraham and Sarah can’t have a child, and the Lord performs a miracle. The son is a child of the covenant. A family tree of epic proportions made me weary, so I put the Bible away. Maybe I can wash some clothes. Or listen to the radio. Or take a nap.

I slept.

The days after.

They started showing this guy’s picture on television a lot after Tuesday. I remember seeing his face a few years back when I was in high school. Seems everyone was too busy obsessing over the Clinton scandal to notice it. Memories came. The Chinese Embassy in Africa being attacked. The suspect. The forgettable name. The face.

The face.

That guiltless face that blends into the foreign background.

The failed strike against the embassy attacker. The embassy attacker hiding.

America forgetting the embassy attacker.

According to the news, the guy’s name was Osama bin Laden, and apparently he had a lot of people helping him. All of them seemed to have some things in common: they didn’t have much to lose; they didn’t have a lot of faith in their mortal lives; and they were easily led by promises that are only fulfilled after death. It was said that the killers were trained from birth to read the Qu’ran in a way that somehow implies killing Americans and, consequently, martyring oneself for the sake of getting a lot of virgin women. bin Laden had this idea that as a Muslim, he was supposed to kill enough Americans to make them understand the plight of the Arabs and to end a theorized pro-Israel conspiracy. Is that what Islam is all about? Killing so-called "ignorant" people over Israel and getting a buncha women? I’m sure a 1400-year-old religion would have a little more substance than that. Apparently, the type of people bin Laden wanted to recruit didn’t need any further incentive.

When I went back to work on Thursday, a few waiter buddies were talking about reports of folks ganging up on people who looked like they could be Arabs or Muslims. One of the victims mentioned was a Latino. I looked out the window and saw the tall, steely world towering over the ants going home from work. I went back to the piano and played a tortured, dissonant medley for the dining pleasure of the handful of people who courageously kept their reservations. It started out with an emotionally harmonized national anthem, and without finishing it transitioned mindlessly into "Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue," "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "America the Beautiful," and on and on until I ran out of songs I could remember, all building up to a high note that couldn’t resolve itself, ringing helplessly in the air-until a low, throbbing note cut through the tension, and scales of madness destroyed harmony and rhythm, its aftermath resonating into an uneasy calm; and then the national anthem gave it another try, with chords that gave it substance and meaning, and the notes of "O Say! Can you see…?" repeated over and over, ascending up the piano until it couldn’t be asked anymore.

At English class the next day, my professor, for some reason, decided to use the time to advocate against profiling and discrimination toward Arabs and Muslims. My immediate family and I weren’t in any organized religious denomination, but I still felt good hearing my professor’s words of religious freedom. When class let out at noon, the President held a national moment of silence for all who died on Tuesday. I got on a bus and went straight to my old school, where familiar faces were an abundant yet precious commodity. I met friends everywhere, and I heard jokes about me being homesick and coming back to the school in the spring. I visited some faculty members, and I told them everything was okay at my new school.

If someone had told me in August that something would happen that would make me visit the school weeks after I left it, I would have laughed it off. The truth was, if I could have taken all my friends and permanently moved them to Saint Xavier, I would have. But I couldn’t. I wanted to do something my old school just didn’t have a program for. I left because something awaited me elsewhere. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to just…well…stop by now and again when I get the chance.

I will visit the school a lot, almost weekly at times, but I didn’t know this. I will almost make the faculty sick of seeing me, but they didn’t know this. Prior to all that transpired, I had no idea I would need to see their faces so much. I didn’t plan on feeling nostalgia toward a building I saw only months before. I just wanted to be around them again. And that day, for a short while, it was as though I never left.

But then, that old confusion started to creep back. Music. Art. Entertainment. This thing we do here that the terrorists can’t do there. This thing that’s been adulterated by the American culture beyond the point of recognition. What is it we both are missing out on? Where’s the middle ground? I grew dizzy and gave up on the subject.

A few friends and faculty later, I found my brother. He was fine. He was working on this really tough homework. I told him that I was fine and that Mom was fine, too. We both felt that school was okay, homework was weird, and teachers were weirder. We parted and I had to get to work.

On the weekend I could visit again and stick around in his new dorm. I met his new roommate. My brother and I spent a lot of time laughing at goofy Internet jokes. We tried to avoid all the sites that had words like "terror," "security," or "Twin Towers" in them, but we managed fine. We walked around the campus telling stories that made no sense, reminisced about the joys of things that had no meaning, and delved back into the dusty archives of childhood. A few of my music buddies caught me and I was shepherded back across the street to VanderCook, and the whole thing started again.

My dosage taken, I was able to make it back to my apartment on Sunday evening, sobering up with some homework. I decided that from then on I’d throw away my routine altogether and just do whatever made sense to me at the time. I ate whatever. I slept whenever. I talked to whomever. I worked at the pace that no one set-the pace that I was meant to follow at any given moment. If I did all my work that day, that was fine. If not, still fine. I had just as much control of my life one way or the other. I just had to make sure I went to bed hearing the words, "you’re done for the day."

But as I was going to sleep that night, I started thinking about what had happened to me that past summer. Of all the things I learned in that time, the most important was that I could never truly predict my own behavior. I realized that all the plans, ambitions, and intentions you can think of still don’t foretell the future. My music teachers would always tell me to keep strong goals and expectations, but that summer I had the chance to put some of them aside, and when I did, I realized that life is more like a jazz solo than a symphony. You can’t have goals and expectations when you’re playing a melody by yourself that you never played before. You just have to be confident that the little voice some people call a conscience will always guide you, even when it doesn’t seem that way. I would realize some time later that it’s the most reliable source of wisdom a person could have. It’s convenient; it’s always with you, and no one can logically ask you for anything more than what it tells you.

At some point during the summer, I wondered if, perhaps, the "little voice" wasn’t just made of proverbial afterthoughts. ‘What if that ‘little voice’ came from an outside source of wisdom,’ I thought, ‘leading us to do things that help life as a whole?’ From then on, my entire view of reality began to change. My life, consequently, started changing with it.

Remembering all those ideas made me realize what truly made Americans different from the madmen who attacked a few days ago: they were never allowed to have faith in their consciences. I realized sorrowfully how simple it truly was. These people were never given the chance that I had to experience personal wisdom-to let the "little voice" lead them time and time again. These people were told that all the answers were in a big, thick book, but not only that-they weren’t even allowed to have a personal understanding about what they were reading. It was all pre-ordained by gun-toting disciples who dictated their terms of salvation to them, and after a short time, their "little voice" gradually died away.

I am more than privileged. I am chosen. I am meant to trust my wisdom and let it grow. I am meant to appreciate my mortal life and not spend it chasing clouds and halos. I was born to be alive and free.

And then I wondered, maybe that’s why they hate us-because we were born on this piece of soil, and they were born on theirs. How morbid. I turned off the lights and slept.

But then, on Monday morning on my way to school, I started looking at the cars. And the buildings. And the clothes. And the media. And the food. And the cool gadgets. I looked at the designer everythings, the luxurious essentials, and the insatiable satisfactions. Why do we Americans, as alive and free as we’re supposed to be, spend so much time trying to escape life? I looked at all these things, and noticed that they now had a new, boldly displayed American flag on them. Are these the privileges that they think America was meant to provide? Is this the happiness the Founding Fathers sought to pursue?

Distractions?

Advertisements?

Novelties?

That next week of school my classmates looked a whole lot different to me than they did earlier. I sat in meteorology class that Monday and listened to them banter before the professor arrived. I wonder what our parents’ money and status really meant to us as kids. Did it make us learn more than other children? Did it make us love our parents more? Did it make us healthier? Did it give us more joy? I saw the answers to all my questions by just watching these products of ideal American life act just as confused and frustrated as any other people. But I was a bit different from the others. I looked at the world with a bit more objectivity than those who would just as soon compare it all to their homeland. That’s what got us in this mess in the first place.

Then the professor showed up, and class began. There were the occasional blatantly wrong answers, awkward silences, and a few rounds of "is this gonna be on the test" before I started staring around the room and thinking about America, classmates, the pursuit of happiness, President Bush, New York, airlines, Islam, war-and then the professor called my name and I had to pretend that the atmosphere was the most riveting subject he could have discussed. I think I fooled my classmates.

Originally I would try to use my long commutes to do homework, but on the way home that day I tried to force myself into believing that I wasn’t going to daydream about life and philosophy, taking out a textbook and trying to read one of the pages for several miles. I couldn’t fool myself like I did my classmates, so I spent a lot of time looking at the people on the buses and trains. These folks spend half their lives serving people they don’t like and the other half being served by people they don’t know just for the sake of being distracted from the people they just served! What happened to their ‘little voice?’

Can it be revived?

I suddenly remembered how a guy would sometimes step on the bus and try to revive everyone’s "little voice" by way of vigilante Christianity, passing out flyers and hollering fractured Biblical rhetoric, all the while trying to solicit donations toward a religious institution that probably no one on the bus will ever see. That can’t be the way to do it. Maybe he needs a little revival of his own. I just hope that if he’s a con, he knows it. I’d feel sorry for a guy like that if he really believed in something that turned out to be a hoax. Of course, in times like these, a guy like that can get quite a response from a confused, frustrated mass.

I didn’t work that night, so I went home to eat, work and sleep.

I woke up to another sunny Tuesday morning.

I hit the alarm and looked at the numbers on the clock. I thought about time. Last week it was measured in heartbeats; now it’s measured in metric units. I looked out the window and saw the same hazy, sunny sky I saw last Tuesday before I left. I realized that the only difference between past, present, and future is sleep. If I never slept, the past would only be my memories; the future would only be my goals. There is no such thing as time. Only an infinite now.

When I took the train that morning, there were the usual shaky, edgy people that I had seen since last week, but this time they were reading the Sun-Times and trying to find out how scared and paranoid they should be. There were some people right next to me who were reading a President Bush article. Before it was an article scrutinizing him about how oilrigs in Alaska will endanger the caribou; now it’s all 90% approval ratings and poetic words of a courageous leader. How dependent we are on popular opinion. A few train stops later I saw women wearing shorts with stars and stripes stitched to the seats; guys were wearing ripped Old Glories on their heads as bandanas; and teens had V-necks and tube tops with eagles and Lady Liberty spanning them. If this is freedom of expression, what’s the message?

It was time for my religion class again. I was a bit apprehensive about going. I hate to see a teacher get emotional. Especially about religion. But the class ran smoothly, and my professor was quite professional. No slams against Islam-no "America is the Greatest" campaigns-no frequent allusions to last Tuesday. This was a class about Abraham and his covenant with the Lord. Nothing more. All I needed to know were the facts. I wrote my notes and let other people ask the questions. But I did write a few commentaries to myself in the note margins.

Then came my American government class shortly after. That was tense. Again, I wrote my notes and let other people ask the questions. But this time the others weren’t so reserved. They wanted the professor to answer questions that he had not included in his lesson plan. Poor guy’s entire class is totally different now. He was a down-to earth kind of guy who liked to debate. Add a bunch of confused, frustrated college students, and you have a recipe for a particularly volatile classroom. "Is there gonna be a draft?" asked someone from out of nowhere. "Well, I don’t know whether or not you’re aware of this," he began, "but we still have a draft. It’s just changed since Vietnam. You see, in the 1980s…" That’s all any of us bothered to hear. We were all too busy wishing we were born fifteen years earlier to hear any details. Of course, that didn’t stop others from raising further unrelated topics.

"What was with that Bush/Gore election?" "Why do we vote at 21 and smoke at 18?" "What does the Secretary of State do anyway?" "Are you pro-choice or pro-life?" Ignorant debating turned into frustrated shouting, which turned into threatening insults, which forced the teacher to threaten back, which made most of the class seethe at the turmoil.

I didn’t take many notes for a while.

Again, the club didn’t need me that evening, so I was homebound. I started to worry about being paid as much as I had been. I looked all around my apartment: assortment of furniture here, kitchen there, modest bathroom and closet on one side, synthesizer keyboard on the other. Robin Leach won’t be visiting soon.

I lay on my couch in the dark and looked at the ceiling-this time with a sense of inquiry. I thought to myself what it would be like to invite some of my classmates over. They’d probably look at it and say that it’s okay. Typical college material, which I guess is a good thing. Then I thought what it would be like if some folks my age from the poorer parts of the world came to see it. I mean, some people have never even seen a refrigerator before. I’d probably be complaining in front of them that ‘my food is spoiling because I have too much in the fridge,’ which is a concept they couldn’t even fathom. A person my age from over there would consider my modest bathroom and closet to be quite a privilege.

That word rang inside me. Privilege. What would I rather be: a bum on the streets of Chicago, or a relatively well-off person in one of those terrorist-ridden countries? That’s when I heard something say: Even the homeless in this country have an advantage over anyone in the terrorists’ conditions. Whether they know it or not, they have the right to do what their "little voice" tells them. They have the right to acknowledge the source of their wisdom and follow it. They have the right to know me.

Indeed…. Am I done for the day?

Yes. Get some sleep.

I slept. Slept. Slept.

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